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Andrea Leinfelder@andrealeinfelder
Spectators of SpaceX rocket may be damaging critical bird habitats in Texas, regulators say // Spectators visiting Starship are walking on delicate habitats crucial to shorebirds. Here's what to know about the mudflats that surround much of the launch pad -- and why you should avoid walking on them when seeing the rocket.
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David Kerley@davidkerley
FAA on SpaceX "anomaly" // The FAA.. which licenses launches and flights into space.. says about the Starship test, "The anomaly resulted in a loss of the vehicle. No injuries or public property damage have been reported. The FAA will oversee the SpaceX-led mishap investigation to ensure SpaceX complies with its FAA-approved mishap investigation plan and other regulatory requirements."
@spacex has released a slow motion video of liftoff.
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David Kerley@davidkerley
SpaceX-"It absolutely was a test." // SpaceX hasn't provided specifics on what it thinks happened to its booster and Starship during the second flight test. "With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary," is what the company says.
SpaceX control room for second Starship test. Elon Musk, his brother, and others try to understand what went wrong.
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David Kerley@davidkerley
Third time will be charm? Starship blows up again! // SpaceX’s second launch of its Starship accomplishes more, but doesn’t complete mission. Launch was pretty. Separation of the heavy booster from the Starship looked OK. It was a “hot staging” igniting the upper stage engines to help with separation (no separation first flight test). That staging may have caused damage to booster. It blew up. The Starship flew on for a while. It blew up 7:07 into flight.
Photos of launch, separation, booster blows up, Starship blows up.
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Andrea Leinfelder@andrealeinfelder
SpaceX's Starship soars for a second time, surpassing earlier mark but falling short of full test // The world’s most powerful rocket climbed above the South Texas sky on Saturday, surpassing an inaugural attempt this spring by successfully igniting all 33 engines of the Super Heavy rocket and then separating from the Starship spacecraft — though Super Heavy exploded while coming down to land in the Gulf of Mexico.
The spacecraft lit its six engines and began hurtling toward Hawaii, though SpaceX lost signal with it a few minutes later.
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Andrea Leinfelder@andrealeinfelder
White House proposes bill to expand FAA oversight of people on commercial spaceflight // New legislation proposed by the White House would give human spaceflight authority largely to the FAA, while the Department of Commerce would oversee robotic spaceflight (except for in-space transportation, such as delivering fuel from an in-space depot to a space station, which will go to the FAA).
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Andrea Leinfelder@andrealeinfelder
Apollo 16 astronaut T.K. Mattingly, famously bumped from troubled moon mission, dies at 87 // NASA astronaut Thomas K. “TK” Mattingly II, who was exposed to German measles and pulled from the troubled Apollo 13 mission, died on Oct. 31. He was 87 years old.
Mattingly would later fly on the Apollo 16 moon mission, and he commanded space shuttle missions in 1982 and 1985. But he’s perhaps most famous for being bumped from Apollo 13 just two days before liftoff.
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Andrea Leinfelder@andrealeinfelder
Repeated Russian hardware issues at International Space Station concern industry experts // Russian hardware at the International Space Station has leaked coolant three times in the past year, prompting questions about the country’s quality control and posing immediate challenges to crew members forced to extend their stay or delay spacewalks.
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Andrea Leinfelder@andrealeinfelder
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio's 371-day mission has ended, but his body will be studied for years // Rubio returned to Earth on Sept. 27 as the U.S. record holder for longest single spaceflight. He's the first American to spend a full calendar year in space, and that makes his body a treasure trove of data as NASA prepares for longer missions farther from home.
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Andrea Leinfelder@andrealeinfelder
No one knows what a metal asteroid looks like. NASA's Psyche mission has set off to find out. // NASA’s Psyche mission launched Friday to explore an entirely new world: an asteroid made of metal.
Robotic spacecraft have flown by planets made of ice and gas. They’ve collected samples from a rubble-pile, carbon-rich asteroid. But scientists can only speculate what a metal world will look like. “There's a very good chance that it's going to be outside of our imaginings,” Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche’s principal investigator at Arizona State University, said during a news conference, “and that is my fondest hope.”
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